Confessions of an Attention Whore

by Ben Cook on March 22, 2010

I am an attention whore.

It’s true. I crave your attention.

Why?

Well sorry to burst your bubble but it’s not because you’re just so great and amazing that I just want you to know that I exist. I’m not some desperate wall flower hoping the pretty girl glances his way. Well, at least not any more. She finally did notice me and God only knows how but I talked her into marrying me but that’s an entirely different story.

I want your attention because if you’re paying attention, I can tell you what I want you to do and you might actually do it!

When I was a kid my mom would have to remind me to do my chores from time to time (always). She’d almost always remind me while I was doing something much more important like playing a video game or chatting on the computer or who knows what. I’d say ok, and sometimes even repeat the request back to her when she dared suggest I wasn’t paying attention.

Naturally several hours later I’d be getting in trouble for NOT doing whatever chore she asked me to do because I wasn’t paying attention.

So yes, I admit I am constantly doing things to get attention online. Things like:

using inflammatory headlines – Yes Virginia, You Ignorant Slut, WordPress is the Best CMS Available!

insulting large groups of people – who cares about the Dutch anyway?

exaggerating the true impact of any given action or decision – why not just unplug the internet while you’re at it!

attacking well known personalities that I disagree with – Matt Mullenweg, Matt Cutts or pretty much any other well known Matt

using evocative images – (see right)

creating an “us” vs “them” battle where one may or may not exist – Communist Russia is going to ban blogging worldwide if we don’t stop them!

sucking up to well known personalities that I agree with – Brian Clark is pretty much a genius

fighting for the “little guy” who may or may not care – Google’s new policy is bad for the USERS, not just because it will screw my SEO efforts.

stretching to tie my point into the popular topic/meme of the day – Justin Bieber loves attention whores

make outlandish promises – every time this post is retweeted I’ll give an orphan a unicorn

And yes, it’s all for attention.

Because once I have your attention, I can tell you why you should subscribe to my RSS feed (for entertaining content like this of course), buy the Thesis theme (because it’s the best WordPress theme on the market and I make money if you buy it through this link), or retweet this post (because it’s awesome, haven’t you been paying attention?) and you might actually do it!

That is, of course, assuming you’re not one of the people I disagreed with or offended.

So the next time someone accuses you of doing something as link bait, to increase page views, or to simply gain attention, take it as a compliment. It means you’re probably doing something right and you’re in damn fine company (me).

Being deliberately inflammatory, insulting, exaggerating, attacking, evoking a largely negative reaction, creating battles, sucking up and fighting. Ben, these resonate to me as unhealthy for the community you’re part of.

Online debate often descends into this sort of negativity. Participants are rarely as honest as you’ve been, but do please look at your word choices. It’s not good for the collective. This form of participation doesn’t contribute positively to any cause a person seeks to pursue, and they are, in the long-term and for the population of a community who allows their meaning in, damaging.

I’m thin skinned and sensitive, I had to remove myself personally from deliberate negativity. Not the subject matters at hand, but certain forms of delivery. When a community embraces or encourages negative means of promotion and participation, it suffers as a whole.

The reading I’ve done in the last six months about the effects of embracing negativity (and attention seeking), scared me. I recognised our industry. I also noticed more acutely how being negative myself, as well as reading inflammatory text, brought me down in general. I wouldn’t walk outside with quite the smile I’d have had otherwise, and believe me, after 2008 and early-2009 had had their way with me, I needed all the smiling I could find.

Multiply this by however many people read, reply to, think about and otherwise digest negativity, and it’s no wonder we won’t flash a smile when we catch the eye of the person sitting opposite us on the train.

I’m not delusional: bad exists. But why create it or invite it in? It’s prevalent enough without invitation. I participated in the past, and it only hurt me and people around me. My lack of delusion, however, doesn’t mean I can’t embrace the concept of not creating or supporting inflammation, confrontation and deliberate attacks, especially for the gratification of one person or one group’s attention (or worse, marketing) needs. It’s really bad for the health of all of us, whether we realise it or not.

Jane, while you’re probably right, I could have included a few more words with positive connotations, my point is that we’re all “whoring” for attention. Whether you do it in a positive or negative way, that to me falls under the category of “haggling about the price” to borrow a line from Churchill.

Many times when someone dares do something like publish a warning about a HUGE problem a WordPress plugin posed, we’re accused of being in it for the page views or _______ bait or what have you. I simply don’t think being an attention whore (which is essentially the accusation being thrown around) is a bad thing. In fact, as Abby said, I think we all are in one form or another.

Yep, no problem at all with things being pointed out in a non-inflammatory manner. I like that piece you wrote about the All In One pack: You have a good point, and I too saw a big mistake made with that plug-in a few weeks ago. Someone had mistakenly used the canonical tag on five of their pages due to messing something up with the plug-in. The tag pointed at the root, and even though those five pages weren’t duplicates of the home page, Google obediently removed them from the index. It was one check-box in the plug-in’s settings and five valuable pages, one level from the root, were nuked. The language you use in the post and the way you point out the real dangers of trusting the plug-in are entirely relevant and helpful.

I was pondering language choice the other day, and I happened to be watching Hulu at the time. Yes, I watch Ghost Hunters like it’s my job. Anyhow, one sentiment expressed two ways struck me as interesting. You could say (on Twitter, or wherever), “If you’re too stupid to know how to use a proxy to watch Hulu outside of the United States, you should get off the Internet”. Or, you could say, “I’m glad I figured out how to use proxies to watch Hulu outside of the United States. If you haven’t checked it out yet, read this [link].”

Although there are things I could work on, like not taking things too personally, being sensitive has helped me be contentious and compassionate. Not saying that a person can’t be either if they are less sensitive, but it’s who some people are. I’ve been maligned for it at various points for many years, but it’s struck me recently that we shouldn’t fight it or feel bad about it. It’s just who we are.

I think there’s a big difference in writing sarcastically and being a douche… Sarcasm is fun and it’s a great way to get attention (yes I’m a professional attention whore too)… But being a douche about something just makes a person a douche… I feel as long as people are being an attention whore in a non-douche way, it’s totally cool.